When the very bottom of things falls out, what can a righteous person possibly accomplish? But . . . Psalm 11

Psalm 11

1 I have taken refuge in the Lord.
    So how can you say to me,
    “Flee to the hills like a bird
2
        because the wicked
        have already bent their bows;
        they’ve already strung their arrows;
        they are ready to secretly shoot
        those whose heart is right”?
3
When the very bottom of things falls out,
    what can a righteous person possibly accomplish?

4
But the Lord is in his holy temple.
    The Lord! His throne is in heaven.
His eyes see—
    his vision examines all of humanity.
5
The Lord examines
    both the righteous and the wicked;
    his very being hates anyone who loves violence.
6
God will rain fiery coals and sulfur on the wicked;
    their cups will be filled
    with nothing but a scorching hot wind
7
    because the Lord is righteous!
    He loves righteous deeds.
    Those whose heart is right will see God’s face.

I was listening yesterday to a young Democratic Congressman who said that Democrats had more support from men 85 and over than we had from "Gen Z" men and asked how is a party supposed to exist in the future under that situation.   It's a good question.  He or the person who was interviewing him mentioned a culture of gaming among such males being heavily influenced by the intersection of such an acculturation with podcasts congenial to it. 

I have enough young relatives who I know very well to be familiar with such a "gaming culture" and know that the content of most all of those games fosters a love of violence, certainly at least in those who are or become susceptible to that.  I remember having a discussion with one of my brothers that I didn't think it was a good idea for them to allow their kids to play such games, which we were then being told by soc-sci guys and gals was "teaching them valuable skills."  Soc-sci guys, at least the ones who get in the media a lot are corporate whores going for the easy sell.  

This Psalm asks the question I touched on the other day when I said I didn't know what to do about persuading those who have been acculturated out of the morality of the Gospel, of The Law, the Prophets and the Epistles.  I would note that is a quite different question than how it would be understood by many who are acculturated by the media campaign of presenting the TV preachers as the definition of "Christianity" noting that for a lot of them their reading of The Book of Revelation, mixed with their action movie presentation of it some of the more bloody and lurid passages from such books as Judges and the such turns religion centered on Jesus into something not that much different from what a mind formed by video games will produce.  

The answer would seem to be that such People will be instructed by the consequences of turning that into their social, economic and political choices and actions, and

their cups will be filled
    with nothing but a scorching hot wind.

I can't say that the message makes me in any way happy but I think it is probably more realistic than most of the retributive criticism of Kamala and the DNC and blanket blaming of Latino men or even white men.   Those young relatives of mine who were influenced by gaming voted for Kamala Harris, even one of my young relatives who had been gulled by libertarianism has learned the hard lessons of life and voted for Kamala Harris as they voted for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton before them.   But clearly a lot of such People don't learn even from the hardest lessons of the last Trump regime and the incredible handling of the economy by Joe Biden who even Bernie Sanders in his criticism that Democrats had abandoned the working class admitted was the most worker supporting President in American history.   THOSE were the voters I said I had no idea of how to reach them because they don't seem to learn from experience and they seem utterly divorced from any real morality which even considers their close neighbors, never even thinking about the least among us except in action movie and video game terms.  

I suspect that a scorching hot wind will be the result, not as an active punishment by God but as a consequence of God's ordering of reality.  What secularism might stupidly imagine as a product of material causation acting on that level of reality.  I think the first part of the Psalm gives good advice, to take refuge in God.  The idea that we can flee to Canada or Ireland or some other country is a delusion.   As if Canada would be very happy to welcome in a lot of the folks who either voted for Trump or couldn't stop his comeback.   And other countries have their own problems, largely caused by corporations and corporate media.  

Read the Psalms,  I'm reading two a day and really stopping to think about what they say.  I'm reading through Jeremiah and will start at the beginning again when I finish it.  I'm reading through Luke right now, as a preparation for Advent.   That's going to inform my reading and thinking about what's going on right now as those consequences are coming.   It's a lot more reliable than the polls were,  if you can't trust them on the election, AGAIN, how can you rely on them to tell you how to fix things?